Category Archives: literary musings

On typing

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I won’t call it keyboarding–I’m too old for that. I learned to type on a small portable Remington while working at a small 100 watt am radio station near Minot, North Dakota. There was really nothing else to do, so I learned to type, even though I had nothing to either write or say. Some might say that is still true today. What I liked about typing was the physicality of punching the keys and watching the letters appear on the paper–an actual piece of blank, white paper–without looking at my fingers or the keys. I developed the same muscle memory that piano players had, but instead of 88 keys, I only had 52, each key was identified with a letter, not a note. I couldn’t play cords, but I could write words in spite of knowing little and saying less. Banging on the keys of a typewriter in order to pound out an essay on post-structuralism is really more satisfying that most existentialists understand. The physical action of punching down the key with one of your fingers give one a very personal connection with the written word. I don’t get that same feeling from contemporary electronic keyboards found on most laptops or connect by wires or bluetooth to a desktop (which are becoming increasingly archaic, just like me). Kids entering college today may have seen a typewriter, but I’m sure they have never used one. Typewriters, along with rotary telephones and cathode ray tube televisions, are relics of the past, inventions that have been dumped on the ash heap of history along with cassette players, eight-track tapes, and 35 mm cameras that still used film to take pictures. A pity.

On mystery

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Human beings are intrigued by the unknown and strive endlessly to know more, to clear up the mystery. Yet, we are also plagued by the unknown, the inexplicable, the mysterious. Modern manifestations of pop culture delve deeply in the mystery genre, and weird pop culture delves into cryptozoology and make-believe monsters, trading in ancient astronauts and Bermuda Triangles. Many mysteries are not mysteries at all when seen against the background of real science and rational empiricism. A person disappears, a bank is robbed, someone lies dead in their own living room, a painting is stolen, the power goes out, a window get broken, the car won’t start, your stomach hurts, and you don’t have an explanation for any of it. A letter is lost in the mail, the washing machine breaks, the roof leaks. We have a hundred mysteries around us all of the time: a strange noise in the night, a familiar looking face at the mall that you haven’t seen in twenty years, a ringing phone but no one answers. We are constantly trying to solve one mystery or another. One of the greatest fictional detectives of all times, Sherlock Holmes, is the modern model and poster boy for mystery solving and rational empiricism. Holmes’ success drove his creator, Conan Doyle, to distraction because he had no idea his detective would turn into one of the wildly successful characters of all time. The mystery genre publishes thousands of new titles every year–the reading public can’t get enough. Mysteries are probably popular because the mirror the chaos of daily life, and since we can’t bring order to real life, we live vicariously through the detectives that bring order to their fictional world. We feel better about our own chaos as order is restored when the detective lets us know that the butler did it.

On mystery

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Human beings are intrigued by the unknown and strive endlessly to know more, to clear up the mystery. Yet, we are also plagued by the unknown, the inexplicable, the mysterious. Modern manifestations of pop culture delve deeply in the mystery genre, and weird pop culture delves into cryptozoology and make-believe monsters, trading in ancient astronauts and Bermuda Triangles. Many mysteries are not mysteries at all when seen against the background of real science and rational empiricism. A person disappears, a bank is robbed, someone lies dead in their own living room, a painting is stolen, the power goes out, a window get broken, the car won’t start, your stomach hurts, and you don’t have an explanation for any of it. A letter is lost in the mail, the washing machine breaks, the roof leaks. We have a hundred mysteries around us all of the time: a strange noise in the night, a familiar looking face at the mall that you haven’t seen in twenty years, a ringing phone but no one answers. We are constantly trying to solve one mystery or another. One of the greatest fictional detectives of all times, Sherlock Holmes, is the modern model and poster boy for mystery solving and rational empiricism. Holmes’ success drove his creator, Conan Doyle, to distraction because he had no idea his detective would turn into one of the wildly successful characters of all time. The mystery genre publishes thousands of new titles every year–the reading public can’t get enough. Mysteries are probably popular because the mirror the chaos of daily life, and since we can’t bring order to real life, we live vicariously through the detectives that bring order to their fictional world. We feel better about our own chaos as order is restored when the detective lets us know that the butler did it.

On Gabriel García Márquez (and Cien años de soledad)

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It wasn’t the first book I read in Spanish, but it was one of those experiences that completely changed my life. I was completely flummoxed by a book that started with the phrase, “many years later, while standing in front of a firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that afternoon when his father took him to see ice.” Almost as good as Cervantes’ “In a place in La Mancha whose name I don’t care to remember.” You remember the books that change your life. There is a before and an after. I can still see Ursula trying to keep here crazy, scheming husband from melting down their life savings. Or Remedios, la bella, whose smell drove mean crazy. Or the seventeen Aureliano’s. Or the parchments. Or the birth of a baby with the curly pig’s tail. Or the storm which sweeps it all away as the ancient alchemist stands by watching. You cannot read this book and be indifferent about the passion of human relations. Without doing much (or any) literary analysis, I’d say that Macondo, as is the case with lots of imaginary places, is the town where you live, maybe the town you grew up in regardless of your specific geography. Towns evolve, people grow up and change, have families, and the Buendía family no different than my family or yours. What is very interesting about the Buendía family is our opportunity to witness their history, warts and all, floods, disasters, tragedies, triumphs, and the simple day-to-day things that happen in all of our lives that no one ever sees or cares about. Is magical realism real? Who knows, but then again, how many weird things have happened in your own life that seem magical but aren’t? So I read this book in Spanish over a long weekend of about three days. I couldn’t stop. The prose, as Mohammad Ali might have said, “Floats like a butterfly, and stings like a bee.” This is one of the few times I feel sorry for non-spanish speakers–you can’t enjoy the original–it doesn’t speak to you. Today, I also write as a tribute to the man who created that wonderful novel. So the author has gone, but not gone, really. The Buendía family is now immortal, as is the coronel, and the patriarch, and Santiago Nasar, and the very old man with enormous wings.

On Gabriel García Márquez (and Cien años de soledad)

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It wasn’t the first book I read in Spanish, but it was one of those experiences that completely changed my life. I was completely flummoxed by a book that started with the phrase, “many years later, while standing in front of a firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that afternoon when his father took him to see ice.” Almost as good as Cervantes’ “In a place in La Mancha whose name I don’t care to remember.” You remember the books that change your life. There is a before and an after. I can still see Ursula trying to keep here crazy, scheming husband from melting down their life savings. Or Remedios, la bella, whose smell drove mean crazy. Or the seventeen Aureliano’s. Or the parchments. Or the birth of a baby with the curly pig’s tail. Or the storm which sweeps it all away as the ancient alchemist stands by watching. You cannot read this book and be indifferent about the passion of human relations. Without doing much (or any) literary analysis, I’d say that Macondo, as is the case with lots of imaginary places, is the town where you live, maybe the town you grew up in regardless of your specific geography. Towns evolve, people grow up and change, have families, and the Buendía family no different than my family or yours. What is very interesting about the Buendía family is our opportunity to witness their history, warts and all, floods, disasters, tragedies, triumphs, and the simple day-to-day things that happen in all of our lives that no one ever sees or cares about. Is magical realism real? Who knows, but then again, how many weird things have happened in your own life that seem magical but aren’t? So I read this book in Spanish over a long weekend of about three days. I couldn’t stop. The prose, as Mohammad Ali might have said, “Floats like a butterfly, and stings like a bee.” This is one of the few times I feel sorry for non-spanish speakers–you can’t enjoy the original–it doesn’t speak to you. Today, I also write as a tribute to the man who created that wonderful novel. So the author has gone, but not gone, really. The Buendía family is now immortal, as is the coronel, and the patriarch, and Santiago Nasar, and the very old man with enormous wings.

On a night with no inspiration

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My muse is sitting out on the back porch, drinking something and wiggling her bare toes in the cool night air. She was reading Petrarch this evening. Petrarch always makes her quiet and pensive–she hates that old Italian, and she kept murmuring, “Trovommi amor del tutto disarmato.” She smokes another cigarette, watches the sun set, gets all maudalin and teary. I noticed she was also reading an old novel–can’t figure out what that’s all about. She likes April in Texas because the weather is always all over the place, at once too hot, too cold, too dark. I tell her I’m going to write about love, but she silently dismisses me and pulls out an old notebook where she starts to scribble. “He was right. Petrarch was right. How could he live with himself?” This time I walk away. A big, huge raindrop lands on her foot, and lightning is grumbling all around. She quotes quietly, “Que ni el amor destruya la primavera intacta.” I can smell the smoke from her half-burned cigarette. A filthy habit, but she doesn’t smoke really; she lights them and lets them burn. She doesn’t as much smoke as she does burn cigarettes. “You know, you need to start a new project,” she calmly says as the dark settles across the horizon. It was always nights like this when I knew that she loved me, but then again, no. I ask, “What would Lorca have said?” Without blinking, and as cold as ice she answered, “Sucia de besos y arena, / yo me la llevé del río.” She just stared out into the night, the wind was combed by the fig tree’s empty branches, and the stars traced infinite paths in the heavens. Ni nardos ni caracolas tienen el cutis tan fino ni los cristales con luna relumbran con ese brillo.–Lorca

On a night with no inspiration

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My muse is sitting out on the back porch, drinking something and wiggling her bare toes in the cool night air. She was reading Petrarch this evening. Petrarch always makes her quiet and pensive–she hates that old Italian, and she kept murmuring, “Trovommi amor del tutto disarmato.” She smokes another cigarette, watches the sun set, gets all maudalin and teary. I noticed she was also reading an old novel–can’t figure out what that’s all about. She likes April in Texas because the weather is always all over the place, at once too hot, too cold, too dark. I tell her I’m going to write about love, but she silently dismisses me and pulls out an old notebook where she starts to scribble. “He was right. Petrarch was right. How could he live with himself?” This time I walk away. A big, huge raindrop lands on her foot, and lightning is grumbling all around. She quotes quietly, “Que ni el amor destruya la primavera intacta.” I can smell the smoke from her half-burned cigarette. A filthy habit, but she doesn’t smoke really; she lights them and lets them burn. She doesn’t as much smoke as she does burn cigarettes. “You know, you need to start a new project,” she calmly says as the dark settles across the horizon. It was always nights like this when I knew that she loved me, but then again, no. I ask, “What would Lorca have said?” Without blinking, and as cold as ice she answered, “Sucia de besos y arena, / yo me la llevé del río.” She just stared out into the night, the wind was combed by the fig tree’s empty branches, and the stars traced infinite paths in the heavens. Ni nardos ni caracolas tienen el cutis tan fino ni los cristales con luna relumbran con ese brillo.–Lorca

On Don Quixote as knight errant

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This man thinks he’s a knight errant out wandering in the world, righting wrongs, protecting damsels, slaying dragons, and dying for the love of his lady, and that is exactly what he attempts to do. The problem, though, is complex because he is a living anachronism, a knight in a time when knights no longer exist if they ever existed at all. The problem of the mere existence of Don Quixote is aggravated by the fact that all of Quixote’s information about how knights act has been gleaned from a series of fiction novels about knights and their adventures. The crusades have been over for centuries, and the figure of the knight has been rendered irrelevant by the invention of gun powder, lead shot, and the blunderbuss. By the time Cervantes writes about the ingenious hidalgo, the era of knight errantry has been over by more than a century. Most of Spain’s military is now pursuing new aventures in the new world, and central Spain, La Mancha, specifically, has become a social backwater where the locals raise grapes, wheat, and olives, and not much else. Whether don Quixote has read too many old adventure novels and gone crazy, or if something else is motivating his actions may be irrelevant. What is important are his actions while he purposefully reorganizes his identity, rebuilds his armor, changes his name, and sallies out on a new adventure, knowing full-well that there are no knights anymore. He is older, in his fifties, perhaps has a little too much free time, has no clear career or life objectives, and is clearly suffering from a mid-life existential crisis–if he doesn’t do something now, he never will. Instead of being young and virile, tough and toned, he’s skinny, got poor muscle tone, and is running on good intentions only. The question though is exactly that: are good intentions enough in the rough and tumble world of 1605, the cusp of modernity, the kryptonite of the knight errant.

On Don Quixote as knight errant

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This man thinks he’s a knight errant out wandering in the world, righting wrongs, protecting damsels, slaying dragons, and dying for the love of his lady, and that is exactly what he attempts to do. The problem, though, is complex because he is a living anachronism, a knight in a time when knights no longer exist if they ever existed at all. The problem of the mere existence of Don Quixote is aggravated by the fact that all of Quixote’s information about how knights act has been gleaned from a series of fiction novels about knights and their adventures. The crusades have been over for centuries, and the figure of the knight has been rendered irrelevant by the invention of gun powder, lead shot, and the blunderbuss. By the time Cervantes writes about the ingenious hidalgo, the era of knight errantry has been over by more than a century. Most of Spain’s military is now pursuing new aventures in the new world, and central Spain, La Mancha, specifically, has become a social backwater where the locals raise grapes, wheat, and olives, and not much else. Whether don Quixote has read too many old adventure novels and gone crazy, or if something else is motivating his actions may be irrelevant. What is important are his actions while he purposefully reorganizes his identity, rebuilds his armor, changes his name, and sallies out on a new adventure, knowing full-well that there are no knights anymore. He is older, in his fifties, perhaps has a little too much free time, has no clear career or life objectives, and is clearly suffering from a mid-life existential crisis–if he doesn’t do something now, he never will. Instead of being young and virile, tough and toned, he’s skinny, got poor muscle tone, and is running on good intentions only. The question though is exactly that: are good intentions enough in the rough and tumble world of 1605, the cusp of modernity, the kryptonite of the knight errant.